Football was first played as a club sport at Iowa in 1872, with intramural games against other colleges played as early as 1882. But it was in 1889 that the University of Iowa first officially recognized a varsity football team, when Iowa challenged Iowa College to the first intercollegiate football game in the state of Iowa and the first west of the Mississippi River. Grinnell defeated the Hawkeyes, 24-0, and a stone marker still stands in Grinnell Field marking the event.